


The Rabbit Hole

by pastel_didactic



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I may break it but I sure as hell fix it, M/M, Sorry Not Sorry, What happens when someone tells Pastel to write a Valentine's Day fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastel_didactic/pseuds/pastel_didactic
Summary: He watches as each individual question filters behind Akira’s eyes as the raven measures them all to find the right ones to say. Akira’s never been a man of words. He chooses them all as if they’re precious stones.Akira settles on a simple question, one that makes Goro wonder just how much Akira knows about him:“What happened?”
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 14
Kudos: 260
Collections: Quality Persona Fics





	The Rabbit Hole

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, Y'ALL :D 
> 
> Today I bring you angst and smooches! 
> 
> Tomorrow... who knows? ;3

The Rabbit Hole

He had no idea when it started. 

He supposes it’s the sort of thing that happens in pieces, and happens softly. It fell heavy like a hammer, but as gently as a feather. One of those things that doesn’t make itself known until it’s too late. Far too late. Perhaps that’s something he deserved- to be shown something so precious only to be forced to tear it from himself. 

Perhaps. Maybe. Potentially. 

Goro doesn’t have time for ‘maybes’. He has a schedule to keep. A ledger to redden. He doesn’t have time for this, and he tells himself that as he moves a chess piece across the board. His white pawn moves to B3. These nights have become something he’s come to cherish. No matter how the timer ticks down on them, no matter how many times he looks up across the table and sees those endless grey eyes and wonder what they’ll look like when life has been drained from them. No matter how many times that very scene has appeared in his nightmares. 

Goro hasn’t been sleeping. 

He wonders if Akira can tell. 

For his part, Akira is silent. He’s never been a man of many words, and Goro’s never forced him to speak. He finds that when Akira speaks, what he has to say is important and impactful. Forcing him to speak outside of that would only lessen his words, and Goro appreciates Akira’s spacious presence. Akira is present, but Akira also keeps a certain amount of distance. Maybe out of consideration for him, maybe out of that fragile, tenuous apprehension that stands between Akira and the destruction of this… is it a friendship? There was a time where Goro wanted to think so. Back when they were just a detective and a barista that sometimes met between platforms. 

But things were never that simple. They’ve never just simply been a detective and a barista. But Goro could dream. 

Maybe that would make this hurt less. 

“I win again,” Goro says, a playful smile tilting across his lips as white king toppels black.

Akira has a kind of determination in his eyes, and something tells Goro it’s for more than just simply the game. 

“I’m not stopping until I win.” Goro wonders what it is Akira thinks he’s going to win. 

He told himself weeks ago that he has to stop spending time with Kurusu Akira. He told himself that it’s in his own best interest- because that’s all he has to look out for now. It’s almost like he’s afflicted with the forgetfulness of a beetle, because he forgets every rule he ever made with himself as soon as Akira calls his name. Every time he hears his name in that quiet dulcet, Goro’s heart skips a beat and he has to stop himself from smiling. This can’t happen. It _shouldn’t_ happen. But it does.

It started late one night, as the team returned from Mementos. After congratulating everyone for their work, some of the team drifted off towards their homes, and some stayed to chat. Goro stood in the alley by the courthouse where they’d gone back into Sae’s palace. One of Goro’s many regrets. He was in the middle of adjusting his gloves when Akira approached him. 

“Hey,” His voice is quiet and deep and moves mountains between the beats of Goro’s heart. Goro wondered if Akira was aware of that. He looked up from his glove and turned towards the leader of the Phantom Thieves. His target. The kleptomaniac who ran off with what remains of his heart. “Yes..?” 

“Are you hungry?” The question was so simple, so quiet. Like it wasn’t meant to be heard by the others. Like it was a secret. Morgana was distracted, making plans with Haru to spend the night with her, and they quietly dispersed from the rest. There was a restaurant not too far from the station that Goro recommended, mostly due to the establishment’s discretion. Goro can’t really go anywhere without fans stopping him in the street, but at this restaurant, each booth was tucked away and it was impossible to tell who was there without approaching the table. 

He shouldn’t be doing this. By now, he had told himself an unexaggerated two hundred times. Goro is meant to kill this boy. He’s meant to walk into a room, put a bullet in his head, and leave. He’s meant to do it, and he’s meant to no longer feel nauseous every time his brain reminds him. But they sat there and talked quietly about Goro’s work, Akira’s jobs. Goro nearly spat out his water and balked at exactly how _many_ jobs Akira has in order to support the team. 

“You have a _multimillionaire_ on the team! Why can’t Okumura help?” 

An unhelpful shrug, “I never asked.” 

Akechi Goro is in love with an idiot. He went home after that dinner with a feeling in his heart he didn’t understand. Laying in bed that night, Goro thought about how if he closed his eyes, the morning would come, and the clock would tick further down on the days Akira had left to live. 

Goro hasn’t been sleeping much, but then, he doesn’t sleep much anyway. 

One of the finer points of his interviews is how he ever finds the time to sleep between his detective work, his classes, the food blog that he runs himself, and his hobbies. Goro hates how they lump everything else under ‘hobbies’. That’s such a strange term. He boulders as a hobby. He cycles as a hobby. He enacts mental shutdowns as a hobby. Who would have thought that the act of ending life could ever be called something so paltry as a hobby? Not that the people who ask him these things are even remotely aware of his Metaverse ability, or what he’s done as the Black Mask. But the answer is the same: he doesn’t really _find_ the time. Finding the time implies he already has that time. No, he _makes_ that time. 

He makes that time because he can barely close his eyes to rest. He closes his eyes and sees a busy intersection, with a scientist and her daughter facing the worst day of their lives. He closes his eyes and he hears the voices of the dozens of people he’s killed, asking him why he saw fit to end their lives. Until recently, Goro has been able to sleep here and there, just a few hours between shutdowns and interviews- nothing much, and nothing fancy. But now he closes his eyes and sees a specific, dead raven boy. He sees blood pouring from a fresh hole in his head, open and lifeless slate eyes that once held the depth of the universe. 

Suffice it to say, Goro sleeps a lot less often. So he fills that time distracting himself from what is warding off his sleep. He works late into the night, case files strewn all over his dining room table as he pretends the coffee beans he’s using to keep himself awake came from some other cafe in Shibuya. He goes into his room and passes the small bookshelf on his way to his laptop and pretends the Red Hawk action figure posed on the desk wasn’t a gift given to him with a tiny, knowing, and smug smile. He pretends he didn’t notice that Akira was without his glasses that day. On his worst nights, he goes into the Metaverse. Because maybe he hates himself, and maybe he feels like if he runs himself into the ground on successive Metaverse trips he’ll finally sleep.

The closer he gets to the day the plan is to be put into motion, the more Goro tries to force himself away from Akira. It’s no easy task, and he has to do it slowly at first. He starts by slowly stopping his visits to the cafe every weekend, claiming work. Akira will ask him if he wants to hang out or go eat somewhere and Goro will decline. He can’t help if he also uses that Made-For-TV smile. That plastic smile he knows Akira hates. It’s the only defense he knows how to make, however flimsy under that endless stare. Akira’s always been able to see right through Goro when he makes that face. Akira doesn’t comment on it, but Goro can see all the words Akira wants to say. The list and the pile of ‘why’s and ‘what’s changed’ asked using so many different words he’s built his own Tower of Babel in dedication to it behind his eyes. 

Goro gives him no answers, and maybe that’s unfair. But that's all he’s got for now. That’s all Goro has ever been able to offer Akira- lies and half-truths, with honesty buried under the crackled surface of each one as they flow from his mouth. Still… Goro wonders if he reaches his hand into his own chest and tears his own torn and brittle heart from his body to offer it to Akira if he would accept it. But for what he’s done, and what he’s yet to do, Goro knows he can never ask that of him. 

Goro spends most of his nights now away from the others, pushed back into his tiny city apartment. His corner of Shibuya, where he really only goes to sleep. He supposes calling it tiny is unfair. There are many more apartments much smaller than this one, and all of them are crammed between floors and stories of other apartments just as small. Goro has the dubious fortune of being contracted by Shido, and as such Shido pays for his housing. That does give Goro some financial dependency on Shido, but he’s willing to put up with it for now. Not that it matters once all of this is over, and his plan is brought to fruition. 

Sometimes Goro gets so consumed with thoughts about what’s going to happen on the 18th that he forgets there is an actual _plan_ for Shido happening very shortly after it. 

There’s a look in Akira’s eyes that hurts. It’s a low, deep-seated thing that only comes out when Goro says good-bye, or when he finally arrives to Leblanc for their team meetings. It comes out when Akira hands him a thermos of coffee in Mementos, always quiet, always caring. Goro can’t find the words to describe what feelings spur on this look in Akira’s eyes, but it makes a cold and thorny hand clench around his heart and squeeze with a bitter grinding of his molars. 

Goro saw that look maybe five times before he realized Akira was internally begging him to stay. 

He can’t stay. There’s an end goal for him- his own destruction. He knows what he has to do to get there. The Herculean Task that separates him from Shido. No matter how many times Goro tries to fight it, or however often he tries to push himself away, Goro knows he’s losing this fight. Every single time he wakes in a cold sweat and a panic and looks down at his hands for the blood he’d spilled from Akira’s head. 

He knows he can’t do it. He knows what Shido will do the moment he realizes Goro can’t do it. What it will imply (that Goro’s gone soft) and what that means (that Goro has a weakness). The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and for Goro, that straight line has a _name._

Stuck firmly between the rock that is his duty, and the hard place that is his wants, Goro stews in his apartment. Today is the fourteenth of November. The calling card is due in four meager days. Goro isn’t sure what would hurt more: if he stayed locked away and didn’t see Akira again until the time came to steal the treasure in Sae’s palace, or if he saw him every single day between now and then, just to drink in the sight of him. Whatever he could do- however many times he could see the raven between now and the ninety-some hours from now that has him putting a bullet in his head. There’s a tiny voice in his head that tells him he’s wasted his time. He could have had a month’s worth of memories. Thirty some days’ worth of cafe visits and chess games. Instead he pushed himself away, and he cannot have that time back to respend at his leisure. That time was gone. 

Does this make him more, or less selfish? To extract himself from the life of the one he loves, at pain to himself, before he has to kill him? Can he even convince himself to do it? To walk the green mile down to his interrogation room, shoot him, and live with himself? However short his life is thereafter? 

Akechi Goro thinks he is a very selfish man. 

If he wasn’t selfish, he would have told Akira from the start about the Black Mask, about Shido, and about the plan. But he didn’t want Akira to hate him or scorn him for what he’s done. That is… if Akira doesn’t already know. Goro wouldn’t love him so much if the man wasn’t intelligent. As luck would have it, Akira is _very_ intelligent. He may already know about Goro’s betrayal. But that doesn’t explain why he’s still on the team. Why Akira even spent the time on him. It doesn’t make sense. The gifts, the days spent out, the late nights texting. All the times Akira came to visit him and they watched Featherman reruns while Goro gave in and ranted about a case he wasn’t supposed to talk about to anyone. It doesn’t make sense. 

A knock on his door startles Goro from his thoughts. He turns sleepy eyes to his apartment door and gets up from his small sofa to check the peephole. 

It’s Akira. 

Frowning, Goro pulls out his phone and sees a couple texts from Shido, all encrypted, but nothing from the group chat or even Akira himself. There was no warning for this visit. Part of Goro doesn’t want to open the door. He could pretend not to be home. That he’s out on a case or asleep. But Akira knows he’s home. That’s why he came here. Sighing and steeling himself, Goro removes the chain and opens the deadbolt of his apartment door, and opens it just enough to see Akira. 

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Akira says softly, shouldering his bag. It appears to be bereft of Morgana, but it has something in it. “I thought I would visit you.” 

“Oh… I’m fine, really, just busy-” Goro starts to get out, an excuse of course, but Akira is gently pushing the door open and stepping into the apartment. “Wh-what are you doing?” Taken by surprise, Goro steps back enough for Akira to squeeze in and shut the door behind him. 

He locks the door. 

“You aren’t fine,” Akira frowns. There’s something in his eyes- something sad, reaching out from the depths to try and reach for Goro, but Goro isn’t reaching in return. Goro narrows his eyes, “You can’t just barge in here. This is my apartment. Get out, Kurusu.” 

Akira freezes, and ice settles in the air between them so thick and dense Goro can swear that the room’s temperature plummeted. He narrows his eyes further. If Goro is good at one thing, it’s self-destruction. “ _What_?” He hisses. 

“You haven’t called me that in months.” At that, Goro stops too. That’s… true, isn’t it? He isn’t sure what happened, or when, but somewhere along the line Kurusu Akira stopped being “Kurusu-kun,” and then stopped being “Kurusu” altogether. He just became, simply, Akira. Wonderful, beautiful, stupid, _insufferable_ Akira. He watches Akira process the realization on Goro’s face, and then it’s Akira’s turn to narrow his eyes. Slender shoulders rise and fall in a sigh, and Akira reaches up and removes the glasses from his face. He folds them up with a clack that almost sounds final, and stores them in his pocket. 

Goro watches this happen in slow motion. Those glasses _never_ came off, except in the late hours they spent together, genuinely laughing or in a private setting far from public eye. When it was just the two of them and silence. The glasses were fake- Goro knew that right away, but there was a heavy significance to watching Akira remove them. It feels like Akira’s removing his mask to speak plainly, and whatever comes out of his mouth next is the honest truth. In the three times Goro has seen those glasses come off, he’s fallen more in love with the man underneath. 

When Akira looks from behind his bangs with clear, unhidden eyes, Goro can see nothing but hurt. 

“When was the last time you ate? Or slept? You look exhausted.” Stupid Akira- damn him and his caring nature making Goro’s stomach feel warm and melted with how _caring_ those words sounded coming from him. Goro is led by the shoulders to the sofa and is sat back down on the cushions, barely chilled by his absence, and Akira wanders off to the kitchenette nearby. There isn’t a lot there. Some frozen dinners in the freezer, easy things that require only a microwave. Goro has never been able to cook. But he has plates and silverware, and Goro can hear the ruffling of Akira’s bag, a vacuum-sealed pop, and the silverware drawer opening on its slightly rusty track. Goro scrambles to find his words in the wake of this sudden appearance and by the time his microwave dings, and Akira comes back, whatever words Goro had mustered died without recognition. 

Akira had made him curry. A spoon was stuck into the mix of curry and rice, and it smelled fragrant and delicious. He had brought him fresh curry in a glass container, and he slid it in front of Goro on the small table in front of the sofa. “Eat something. Then you and I are going to talk.” 

Just like that, all of Goro’s words come rushing back, “That’s rather bold of you. Inviting yourself into my house and demanding that we talk.” Akira gives him a noncommittal shrug, “How else was I supposed to get you to talk to me? You disappear after every meeting and have stopped answering my texts. That’s not fair, Goro. I thought we were friends.” 

Goro bites back the hurtful words he was going to say as he looks at the curry. Because of his aversion to spicy food, he’s never been able to enjoy the curry the group has always lauded for its taste. But this was much different. Significantly lighter in color, and not as red, Goro takes a spoonful and tries it just to give himself something to do other than further burn the cinders of the bridge between them. It really is delicious. Rich and flavorful, and not at all spicy. There’s a note of sweetness, and if Goro didn’t know any better, he’d say it was chocolate or apple. Or both. In curry, it was a risky move, but it definitely paid off here. Akira had made this specifically for him, at a level that he’d be able to eat. It’s touching, honestly. 

Akira’s silent as Goro eats, tapping away at his phone and letting Goro take his time. He hasn’t eaten anything in a long time, and it wasn’t until he took that first bite that he realized exactly how hungry he was. He has to prevent himself from scarfing it down, just because it’s that good and honestly better than anything currently on standby in his fridge. When he’s done, he sits the empty container on the table and simply says, “Thank you.” 

It’s more than he’s said to anyone else. 

Akira simply nods, quiet as always, and tucks away his phone. There’s a myriad of questions hiding in those eyes and now that Goro’s face to face with them again, he both doesn’t want to look into them, and cannot look away from them. He watches as each individual question filters behind Akira’s eyes as the raven measures them all to find the right ones to say. Akira’s never been a man of words. He chooses them all as if they’re precious stones. 

Akira settles on a simple question, one that makes Goro wonder just how much Akira knows about him: 

“What happened?”

Goro can hear several other questions behind Akira’s tone and the way he enunciates his words. “What happened to us?”, “What did they do?”, “Are you in danger?” Akira gives far too much of himself to the people who he considers close to him, and Goro hadn’t thought until now that he should potentially count himself among that number. Goro shakes his head, and the lie tastes bitter even before it leaves his mouth, “I’m very busy, you know that. I have cases, and school work to keep up with between interviews. I don’t always have time to hang out.” They both know it’s a lie. Goro makes time for Akira anyway. 

“Okay,” Akira accepts with a shrug, “Now that the lie is out of your system, do you want to tell me the truth?” 

Insufferable. Insufferable, stupid, sacrificing, caring, _moron_. Goro groans, and his facade cracks. “Why can’t you accept it?” The feeble lie he’s told. The counterfeit answer brokenly covering up the honest truth. 

“I don’t accept it, because I know better,” is all Akira responds. He doesn’t clarify exactly how he knows better, but he looks across the sofa at Goro and turns more to face him. “I _can’t_ accept it. It’s a bullshit answer. I didn’t come here for bullshit.” 

Of course he didn’t. He never does. 

It takes Goro a long time to answer him. A startlingly long time. There’s a cork stuck in a pressurized container inside his throat. If Goro pulls that cork, or leaves it to simmer, Goro knows he’s lost. He knows it will all come pouring out like the font of truth, spewing honest truth after genuine feeling. He bites it back, holds it in however much it hurts. Goro wrings his hands and doesn’t notice he’s doing it until a warm third hand covers his two cold, fidgeting ones. 

“ _Goro_.”

Hopeless. It was hopeless. Every single effort he’d ever made to keep his love for Akira at bay was hopeless. A wasted effort. Goro looks up to Akira and something in those grey eyes clears. Something Akira sees in him. 

Maybe it’s the fear.

“... You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you,” Goro begins, shaking his head and looking away again. Akira’s hand grips his, and he looks back down at them. 

Goro isn’t wearing his gloves today. He wasn’t expecting company of any kind. Much less this kind of surprise visit from Akira. “You would be amazed by the kind of things I’d believe. The Metaverse is hard to believe too, isn’t it?” 

“This isn’t the same thing.” “Isn’t it?” This was stupid. 

“No, it’s not,” Goro keeps trying to get it through Akira’s thick skull, but Akira presses onwards in that stubborn, stupid way he does. That way that Goro can’t resist. He rises to meet it like the tide, and Akira matches him. Effortlessly, like he’s always done. 

“Really? Because it looks the same to me. Only you won’t tell me who, or why. Or what they’re making you do that’s pulling you away from m… from us.” 

Goro’s smirk is knife-sharp and bitter around his words, having caught Akira in a lie of his own, “I thought you said you hadn’t come here for bullshit.” 

They fall silent, and it feels tense. It feels like the brink of something that threatens to break them, ruin them. Or maybe it could save them. At this point, everything Goro looks at is awash in darkness. For the last few months he’d sworn he couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. But when he looks up into Akira’s eyes from where he’s slouched on the sofa, he thinks he can see the dim glow of candlelight. He follows that light, and something about Akira’s expression makes it brighter. Like the beacon of a lighthouse, guiding Goro to shore from many months out at sea. 

“If you know so much, why don’t you say it for yourself?” Goro’s words are whisper quiet and paper thin. He watches Akira count the karats of his words. 

“I want to hear it from you.” 

Goro takes a shuddering breath and wonders when it was that Akira got so close to him and his heavy heart that perhaps no one should ever want. 

“I have… been tasked with something I am reluctant to do,” Goro just can’t make it come out of his mouth. It would damn him. No sensible human being would ever want to entertain the company of someone who’s done what he has. “Yes..?” Why does Akira look at him like that? It’s a strange look, and a rather imposing one. To be the direct center of Akira’s attention, fully pinned by that stare. “What something?” 

Goro feels so helpless, and he _hates_ that. He pulls away, “No, that’s enough.” Goro gets up from the couch and the tenuous moment between them snaps like a twig. The snap is tangible, like a living thing, and Goro’s suddenly aware of the chill in the room. He’d left a window open trying to get some air. Goro walks over to the window and snaps it shut, “I won’t sit there and let you in that easily-” “Why not?” Oh, so now Akira sounds _frustrated_. Goro rises to that. “Why can’t you just let me help you?” “All you do is help other people. I’m not going to be one of those helpless saps that throws everything onto you and expects you to fix all my problems-” 

“I _want_ to help you, Goro.” 

“No one _wants_ to help me with anything! Don’t bullshit me! Just- get out!” Akira’s rounded the coffee table and is standing in front of him and somehow the much more slender man feels like an immovable wall between Goro and the rest of his apartment. “I’m not leaving until you tell me why you haven’t spoken to me outside of Mementos in two weeks.” So calm, while Goro’s emotions rage like the tide in a storm. He can’t stop it, anymore than the tide can stop itself from crashing onto the rocks. It’s tense and feels like a volcano about to erupt. 

The pressure cracks that bottle in Goro’s throat. 

The cork pops upwards and outwards.

“Why? So you can stand there and listen while I tell you I’m supposed to _kill you_!?” Goro throws up his hands, not even noticing the sheer lack of surprise on Akira’s face. A wise person would be leaving. A wise person would never have come here. 

Akira is intelligent, and Goro loves him for it, but he’s not very wise. 

“I’ve been sitting here and wondering what the _fuck_ I’m supposed to do, when I’ve been ordered to kill you and _I don’t want to_!” Now that Goro’s began, he can’t stop. The words pour forth, and Akira is the patient sort. He lets them be spilled out onto the ground between them, pushing his hands into his pockets. 

“I’m _sick_ of being used by other people like a goddamned assassin- Why does it have to be you!?” Goro grits his teeth and hangs his head, stinging at the corner of his eyes for tears he won’t let himself shed. “I’d be fine if it were anyone else. I’d be fine if he asked me to kill literally anyone else. But I can’t kill you. I can’t.”

Akira listens to him rant, and then asks what could possibly go down in history as the dumbest question ever asked: 

“Why not?” 

In all fairness, that’s a legitimate question. Goro’s taken dozens of lives so far. What’s the life of this one boy? What makes him so special? What makes Akira so much different than the others he’s killed? How does a killer place a value on the life of a victim? Goro knows the answer, and he glares venomously at Akira’s impassive gaze, “Why aren’t you reacting?” He fires back at full speed, “I just told you I’ve been ordered to kill you. That you’re supposed to die soon. Very soon. And you came here, unarmed, unprotected, without Morgana. And you’re acting like you already know.” 

“What would you do if I knew?” 

This fucking smartass. 

“What the fuck do you mean you already know?” 

“Answer the question, Goro.” The man in question glares at the raven even harder, and if looks could kill Akira would be dead twice over by now, and the point would be moot. “Would you ask me to help you, if I already knew? Would you finally give up the bullshit? _Does it matter_ that I know?” Akira’s getting closer, and Goro feels fight or flight kick in, and he backs up against the shuttered window. “Why did you come here, if you knew? Most people would have run, or called the police.” Goro wants to snarl and throw claws as bile climbs up his throat and sticks there.

“I told you. I wanted to hear it from you.” “And now that you have?” Akira’s backed him fully against the window, and Goro goes almost easily. Goro looks the scant inch downwards into Akira’s eyes and their endless pools. He wonders what Akira sees when he looks into Goro’s haunted red. “I want to help you, Goro,” Akira says softly, “Not like I help the others. I want to work _with_ you. As a team.” Akira’s said a lot in the last hour, and Goro wonders if that’s just the privilege Akira is giving him, or if it’s a desperate plea to save his own life. 

Goro takes that thought back the moment it makes itself known. Akira is not a cowardly man. He flirts with the edge of danger, and that’s something Goro loves about him too. If Goro could count all the reasons why he loves Akira, he feels there wouldn’t be enough numbers in the world to catalogue each one. “Why,” Goro asks, mostly breath and desperation. 

It was a valid question, he thought. But he should have expected that Akira wouldn’t answer with words. He’d used so many of them already, that only actions would suffice to get his point across to Goro before the other man thinks he’s just placating him. 

Akira’s lips are the softest things he’s ever felt. They feel like star stuff, impossible to grasp and hold, but precious and things that have the power to create life and breath. They’re warm- so tangibly warm that if he didn’t know any better he’d think Akira was running a fever. Goro breathes in through his nose and tilts his head just _so_ to the side, slotting their lips together into everything he’s ever wanted. Goro melts like ice under the desert sun, helpless to resist Akira’s gravitational pull. His hands frame Akira’s face and Akira’s hands settle on his hips like he wouldn’t go anywhere even if he wanted. 

Goro had never even considered this an option- that Akira would want him in return. Given their usual banter and how they spend their time, Goro thought Akira had figured them to be no more than friends. He’ll have to refigure his plans, now that circumstances have certainly changed. Though now, he has Akira with him. He had to admit, the task ahead seemed a lot less daunting. 

They’d figure it out in the morning.

Together.


End file.
